


a little bit of honesty

by bornuntotrouble



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Based On That Bar Scene in Prague, Beck and His Ulterior Motives :/, Glory Hole, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 10:42:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20692202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bornuntotrouble/pseuds/bornuntotrouble
Summary: This man just saved the world. Thousands,millionsof people would fall at his feet and offer Beck anything and everything for his heroic deeds, and he’s still trying to get an easy handjob in a dirty little bathroom in Prague.





	a little bit of honesty

The second Peter steps foot in the dim, hazy interior of the tiny bar Beck has dragged him to, he makes a beeline straight for the bathroom, intentionally ignoring Beck’s ‘wait a minute, you should probably...’ warning. No matter what he should probably be doing, he’s pretty sure decompression comes first.

It’s been a really, _really_ busy day. Peter hasn’t had a lot of time to sit down and process any of the events that have transpired in the past twenty-four hours; he hasn’t had time to eat (not that he would have an appetite, anyway, with all of this elemental business mixed with his school trip causing his stomach to perform nervous somersaults every thirty seconds) and he hasn’t had time to change out of the dusty, dirty, lightly-singed suit that had been gifted to him not so long ago, which is yet another thing he hasn’t had the opportunity to examine thoroughly.

Everything feels off-kilter, and when he finds a bathroom he pushes through the door and sags against it once he’s inside, squeezing his eyes shut to force the evening’s events—Fury’s admonishment, the fire elemental, Beck’s near-fatal sacrifice, the unexpected endangerment of his friends—into a box that he can close in his mind until he’s ready to open it again.

He takes a few deep breaths, ignores the stinging in his eyes, and heads for the nearest urinal; among everything else, he hasn’t even had time to pee, and it takes no time at all for Peter to realize that, while he’d helped defeat a molten monstrosity that had decimated an entire planet just like his own, he was facing the greatest defeat thus far of his entire short career: the Night Monkey suit doesn’t have a zipper in the crotch.

“Godda–ugh,” he groans, unable to even fully express his frustration coherently, and spins around to find a suitable stall.

Now that he’s paying attention, Peter finds himself somewhat unnerved by how dingy and ancient-looking the bathroom is. He’d only noted the sort of dim, charming interior he would have expected from a pub-slash-bar-slash-watering-hole-for-old-folks on his rush over, but there’s a noticeable difference in quality between the bar’s main lobby (is that what you call the open space of a bar? Is it even a bar? Is there a difference between that and a pub?) and the inside of this bathroom. It’s not that it’s the worst public bathroom he’d ever been in, no, because Queens has more than its fair share of those, but the once-elegant wallpaper has cracked and faded and the sink and urinals look like they were probably white and spotless a decade ago. The stall doors are wooden and the paint is beginning to peel from some of them, and it’s with a vague sense of unease and a terrible, horror-movie-worthy creak from the hinges that he pushes the door open and steps into the largest stall.

Beggars can’t be choosers, he reminds himself as he eyes the toilet, and he shuts the door behind him and begins the awkward process of shedding his new suit.

Once his bladder is empty and most the buckles that fasten the dark armour plates to his arms have been snapped back into place, Peter snags his mask and goggles from where he’d slung them over the side of the stall, picks up his discarded backpack, spins back toward the door to exit the stall, and does a double-take; just close enough to the front of the stall to be hidden behind the open door, approximately waist height, a small hole ringed with silver—duct tape, Peter realizes quickly, placed around to dull the sharp edges—has been cut in the wood.

He stares at it for a moment, then slowly crouches and peeks through, long enough to decide that the toilet (and therefore Peter himself) would be safely out of view from the stall next door. He hadn’t felt any indication that he was being watched, and there’s definitely nobody else in the bathroom with him. He’s sure that if someone were to look through this hole, at least, they wouldn’t be able to see much of him anyway.

He continues to frown at the hole for a few seconds, but it doesn’t appear to present any imminent threat. Curious and somewhat unnerved, Peter springs to his feet and vacates the stall.

Beck lights up as soon as he catches sight of Peter making his way back out into the bar. There are a few patrons scattered throughout the interior, some engaged in intimate conversation over small tables filled with shared drinks and open menus and some sitting on their own, gazing out the windows frosted over with years’ worth of wear, and most of them don’t seem to pay him mind. He half-jogs back to the barstool that Beck has already pulled out for him and hops into place, noting that Beck has already ordered himself something beer-bottle-shaped with a label that Peter can’t decipher.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly, “been a long night. I just needed a minute to clear my head.”

“You’re telling me,” Beck says with a knowing smile. He rests his hand on Peter’s shoulder for a brief moment, and it’s quite possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever done for him in the wake of such a massive battle. “But we’re here, right? How about we shake all that off for now. It’s time for celebration.” 

Beck waves a few fingers at the bartender to flag him down, and Peter leans in close and clears his throat as subtly as he can.

“If you’re going to the bathroom later, just keep an eye out. There’s a little hole in one of the stalls, so maybe just make sure you choose one that doesn’t–you know. Have one. For privacy.”

Beck narrows his eyes and leans in a bit closer. “A hole? That doesn’t seem right for a place like this. Maybe you should tell someone about it?”

“What? No, no, I wouldn’t want to–get anyone in trouble, or anything,” Peter lies in a hushed voice. He’s sure Beck can see through him, but after tonight’s attack, the last thing he wants to do is bring attention to himself while he’s here. The fact that he’s dressed like a mercenary who just barely survived his last encounter is still more conspicuous than he’d prefer to be, though he appreciates that Beck is still sitting next to him in his luminescent breastplate. Two heroes is always less suspicious than one, and Peter’s pretty sure this bar doesn’t contain the sort of patrons who like to ask questions. “I’m just not gonna mention it. Maybe they’ll notice one of these days. Someone else will probably complain anyway. The bathroom’s kinda gross. Looks like nobody’s used it in, like, five years.”

Beck gazes at him for a long moment, wrinkling his nose at the thought of the bathroom’s state, then sits up straighter and nods decisively. “Smart idea, kid. I bet someone’ll hear about it real soon. Hey, bartender, do you mind…?”

He gestures at the middle-aged man currently occupied with hand-drying a series of crystal tumblers, and Peter takes a deep breath and rests his arms on the worn bar surface and sighs, relieved at last to enjoy a moment of quiet on this utter nightmare of a trip.

}}8{{

Beck is the first to step into the bathroom at the end of the night, and once Peter’s inside and the door’s safely closed, he looks around with a grimace and shakes his head. “Yeah, you’re right. It really is disgusting in here.”

“Told you. Looks like this place hasn’t been used in forever.” 

Peter’s already on his way toward the stall he’d been in previously, and he pauses to check under the door for feet as Beck mutters under his breath, “You’d think it would be harder for the fucking cleaners to overlook an entire bathroom. Wait, I thought you said to stay away from those stalls?”

“I did,” Peter says, wrestling with the buckle on his belt as he pushes open the door to his changing stall, “but this is the biggest one in here and they didn’t put a zipper in my suit when they made it, so I have to take all the armour off so I can get my arms out and pull it down. I’m pretty sure that lady, whoever she was, didn’t know that I’m not...”

He trails off, not sure precisely where he’s going with the statement, and closes the door behind himself.

“No zipper, huh? That feels a little short-sighted.”

“They probably had to guess my measurements when they made it, or like… digitally measure them or something from some footage. Mr. Stark probably had a set of measurements somewhere for that metal suit, but those would be old now.”

“You mean they’re from when you were younger?”

”Kind of,” Peter says, pausing to remove his fingerless gloves with his teeth. He can’t help but wonder if Beck, whose armour seems far more complicated than his own, has to deal with this unfortunate routine every single time he needs to use the bathroom, too, or if pieces of his suit simply disintegrate into a puff of green smoke when he needs some freedom. “I mean, not a long _long_ time ago, but… a little while.”

A brief hush falls over the bathroom, and Peter realizes belatedly that there is no music playing to make the sound of his peeing any more pleasant. He whistles a little to fill the silence, but it’s Beck who speaks up first.

“Hey, uh… kid, I’m gonna be honest with you for a sec, okay? And I don’t want you to freak out on me in there.”

An unexpected wave of terror washes over Peter, the sort that’s caused by the utter lack of knowledge of precisely what he’s about to face, but he doesn’t have time to think about what he might have done wrong out in the field or whether Beck’s about to suggest that giving EDITH to him is a terrible idea or—

“I don’t think this is a peephole,” Beck says, then lowers his voice. “I think this is used for something else.”

Peter thinks about it for approximately five seconds.

“Oh,” he says, twisting back to look at the hole. It feels like he’s just been smacked with a horrifying clarity. “Ew. Really?”

Beck laughs on the other side of the stall. Peter can see the shadow of his feet and legs on the floor, but he’s pretty sure Beck’s respectful enough not to watch him do his business so he doesn’t bother hurrying along. “Yeah, really. I think you found a glory hole, Peter. From the look of this bathroom, probably not a popular one, but… you can kinda tell.”

Peter glances back again, eyeing the hole with newfound suspicion. “I thought those were, like, an urban myth. Or more discreet than that.”

“What, you guys don’t have shady bathrooms in New York?”

“Not the bathrooms I’ve been in,” Peter says. He tries to picture all of New York’s dingiest bathrooms and can think only of graffiti and flickering lights and maybe, just maybe, some suspicious-looking wads of toilet paper left on the floor. He’s surprised Beck even knows what a glory hole is. He seems like the sort of upstanding citizen who would be tasked with cleaning up the sort of unsavoury neighbourhoods where bathrooms like that would be located. “Wow. That’s gross. Did you touch it?”

Beck laughs again. His voice echoes in the small bathroom, a little too loud but pleasant at the same time. “No, but it’s kind of obvious now, isn’t it? Doesn’t give you a great view of the toilet, but at this height…” He pauses as Peter begins to pull the suit back on. “Well, you know, maybe I’m wrong. It does look a little snug. What do you think?”

Peter is incredibly alarmed to see something flesh-coloured sticking through the hole when he swivels his head, but once he’s recovered from his incredibly minor heart attack he realizes that it’s Beck’s middle and ring finger wiggling at him from his side of the graffiti-covered wooden wall.

“Oh my god, that’s probably so unsanitary,” he says as he wrestles his suit back into place. “Random strangers just put their dicks in those?”

“Relax, kid,” Beck murmurs. “It doesn’t look like it’s been recently used. Judging by the group we saw out there, I’m willing to bet this thing probably doesn’t see a lot of action.”

Peter tries not to think about what ‘a lot of action’ would look like, and as Beck’s fingers disappear from the hole he realizes that he’s been standing with one of his shoulder plates dangling from his arm for just a few seconds too many. He’s seen pranks where people have tried to thread their fingers through the flies of their pants to play them off as something else, but he’s never understood how anybody could mistake a few fingers for a dick until right this second.

And he’s definitely not thinking about what a dick would look like poking from that hole rather than fingers.

Peter swallows hard and snaps the shoulder pad into place, then pulls the stall door open and moves for the second time tonight toward the cleanest sink.

“So… enough about my plans,” he says conversationally, “do _you_ have any plans for tonight? After you’re done celebrating the big win?”

He’s not sure what people do after going to the bar for a celebratory drink. Most of what Peter knows about the bar scene involves stumbling home drunk (he would be murdered by his teachers on sight, and worse, Aunt May would find out), passing out in a stairwell or a cab or maybe even on a dance floor (the bar doesn’t have the first or third, but he knows that unless his non-alcoholic drinks were spiked, he’s not drunk enough to pass out in any vehicle), and/or taking someone home for the night (where would he even start?). It would be nice to wander through the streets of Prague, maybe, but all of his friends are at the Carlo IV and under constant supervision. After tonight’s attack, he’ll be surprised if the hotel hasn’t initiated some sort of lockdown procedure. 

The only person he could possibly hang out with is Beck, come to think of it. Even EDITH is no longer in his possession.

“Nah,” Beck says, “I think I’ll turn in early. Head to Berlin tomorrow, try to prepare for Fury’s next mission or whatever official business he wants me to take on.” 

Peter glances at the reflection of the stall in the grimy mirror. He can still see the edges of Beck’s boots angled toward the side of the stall where the hole is, and he shakes some water from his hands and turns around just as Beck says, “Uh-oh.”

Peter is used to weird by now, but ‘uh-oh’ strikes him as being a very weird sound to make in a bathroom stall.

“Is everything okay?”

“Ahhhh,” Beck says, drawing the sound out in an obvious bid to buy himself time, “yeah, everything’s great.”

“Are you still… you know, fingering the hole?” Peter asks, grinning at the stall door. That’s a bacterial nightmare he wouldn’t wish upon anyone, all jokes aside, and he’s a little concerned when Beck’s silence stretches on. “...Mr. Beck?”

He hears a quiet but sharp inhale. “Hey, Peter, why don’t you head back to the hotel? You had some plans, right? Get back to your friends. Go kiss your girl. I’ll be good here.”

Peter’s grin slowly disappears. He pushes himself away from the sink and takes a step toward Beck’s stall, imagining the absolute worst: an old, crusty splinter, or maybe a new elemental rising out of the toilet, or worse, out of the glory hole—

“What’d you do? Are you—?”

“Peter, trust me, you don’t wanna ask questions right now, okay?”

Peter stands outside the flaking wooden door and gazes down at the shadow of Beck’s legs, which are still facing the side of the stall, and all he has to do is lean in and squint through the gap between the door and the wall to understand what it is he’s not supposed to be asking questions about.

“Walk out the door, Peter,” Beck says quietly. “I don’t want you to see—”

“Dude, I know what a glory hole is, okay? I’m not just some innocent little child,” Peter mutters. He looks away to give Beck a fraction of the privacy he’s just invaded, but he already knows precisely what it means when someone stands up against a wall with a hole in it like that. He’d thought Beck was more responsible than this, or at least more sober, but he wants to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is his first glory hole, too. Maybe his curiosity had just gotten the better of him. Peter wouldn’t be able to fault him for that.

“You’re right,” Beck says, his voice softer, his tone less urgent. “I’m sorry. I’ve just never been, ah… caught in this kind of situation. I shouldn’t take it out on you, this is… it’s my fault.”

Peter scoffs at the floor and thinks for a moment. He’d managed to avoid thinking about what Beck’s dick would look like poking through the hole before, but now that he knows for sure it’s Beck’s dick that’s in there and not his fingers, he feels a sudden wave of warmth rising underneath his suit. “Yeah, well… maybe I can help, if you trust me enough to try. Getting people out of sticky situations is kinda my thing.”

“Sure,” Beck says after another few seconds of thoughtful silence. “Maybe less of the sticky and more of the saving people, though. And Peter–whatever you do, please don’t judge me for this. Or mention it to Fury. Or anyone else.”

“You got it,” Peter agrees. He pushes the empty stall door open just wide enough to slip through and drops his backpack carefully on the ground, bracing himself or the inevitable and very much not unseeable image of Beck’s penis in the hole. “Let’s blame it on those two whole beers you had, yeah?”

“Right.”

And Beck’s penis is very much in the hole.

Peter’s not actually sure what he’d expected. Snug-looking, Beck had called it, but Peter had assumed he’d consider it a snug fit for a fully erect dick, which Beck’s is not. Rather, not currently. It looks like he’s maybe halfway there, not quite soft but not completely hard yet, but he can see why Beck had called it snug—it’s starting to compress him, right at the base, and as he shifts a bit Peter can see it picking up the slack in his skin. It looks like the kind of setup that could easily toe the line between enjoyable and uncomfortable. He wishes he could see Beck’s face so he could decide for sure which it is.

Beck clears his throat. “Listen, I know what you’re thinking, and if this is too weird for you—”

“It’s not,” Peter says a bit too sharply. He’s glad, suddenly, that he can’t see Beck’s face. “You don’t have to act like this is the first time I’ve seen a dick, okay? I’ve got one of my own, I know how this works. Just let me think for a second.”

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate Beck giving him an out, but the past few weeks Peter’s started to realize that nobody seems to know precisely how they want to treat him. He’s still a kid to nearly everyone when it comes to listing and doling out punishment for his failures, but all of his successes are that of a man’s. He wishes they’d just stick to one. At least he could decide for himself what he wants to be.

Peter spends another moment shoving that thought into his emotional lockbox for later sorting, then asks: “So you really can’t move? How do you even get stuck in something like that?””

“If you want the truth, it was kinda tight to start and I liked the way it felt,” Beck says, lowering his voice appropriately for such a weird admission. “I’m sure you know how it is.”

Yeah. Peter knows how it is.

“Can you move at all? In or out?”

He kneels down and watches Beck try, but the taped edge seems to have bitten into his skin and appears to be holding him more or less in place; the skin slides ever so slightly, and Peter finds himself imagining (in a purely, one hundred percent theoretical sense) how nice it might have felt at first, a mostly-smooth hole just tight enough to push through, but a dick like Beck’s (which he had not imagined before, but is probably never going to forget now) was bound to get stuck. It looks to be even harder now than it was just moments ago, the head smooth and flushed pink with no foreskin to cover it, veins beginning to stand out against his skin.

“That’s all I’ve got.”

“Hm,” Peter says, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin. He can think of a few really great ways to force an unwanted erection into submission, but then another idea strikes him. A terrible idea, but an idea nonetheless. All he needs to do is try to compress—

and then _another_ idea seizes him, freezing him where he stands and forcing another uncomfortable flush to crawl up his cheeks.

This couldn’t have been an accident.

He opens his mouth to accuse Beck of plotting something so ridiculously nefarious that it’s almost laughable, and what comes out instead is: “Okay, got it. Hold on to something.”

He wraps his hand around Beck’s cock and squeezes it.

“Oh, my god—”

“I know, I know, just–sh, shut up,” Peter says, trying to quiet himself as much as Beck. If there was ever a time he needed his hands to not shake, this would be it. “Just hold on.”

He focuses on slowly squeezing Beck’s cock, carefully pressing his thumb and the side of his forefinger on either side of the base. Beck lets out a low groan on the other side of the wall, but it’s not one of pain. Just as Peter is familiar with having a dick of his own, he’s familiar with how this feels, too. He can practically feel Beck’s pulse thrumming in his hand, mixing with the thundering heartbeat from the artery in his thumb.

“Try and pull out,” he says quietly.

Beck does. Slowly, skin still scraping slightly against the sides of the hole where Peter isn’t compressing him, he backs out with a low, cautious hiss; suddenly, all Peter can think about is the way Beck’s skin feels against the palm of his hand, firm and hot and… wow. This man just saved the world. Thousands, _millions_ of people would fall at his feet and offer Beck anything and everything for his heroic deeds… and he’s still trying to get an easy handjob in a dirty little bathroom in Prague.

“Easy,” Peter breathes. “See?”

Beck’s cock slips out of his fingers and disappears from the hole, but not before Peter’s fingers close around the head. A small, translucent smear of fluid is left on the pad of his thumb. 

“Holy shit,” Beck sighs, managing to sound almost convincingly relieved. “You just saved me from a really awkward conversation with that bartender out there, you know that?”

Normally Peter would share in the good cheer, but he finds himself still staring at the hole instead.

“Quentin.”

There’s a pause. Peter wonders if Beck feels that same sheer terror that he’d experienced earlier. He kind of hopes that he does. 

“Yeah, man?”

Peter swallows and shifts his weight, but doesn’t rise from the hole. He listens for the sound of Beck adjusting himself, zipping up a zipper, fastening a belt… nothing. It’s as if he’s waiting for something. “If you wanted me to touch you, all you had to do was say so.”

Beck laughed suddenly, incredulously. “What?”

“I said if you wanted me to touch you, put my hands on you, or whatever… you just had to ask. You don’t need to trick me into it.”

“Peter,” Beck said, lowering his voice. “You think I’d try and trick you into doing something like…”

“I know what glory holes are, dude. I know what people do at these things. Just because I haven’t been around one myself doesn’t mean I… it doesn’t mean I don’t get what you’re trying to do. And I would have done it if you’d just asked.”

He gazes almost angrily at the glory hole, still thinking about the warmth of Beck’s cock against his hand, and exhales harshly before he adds, “Come back. I want to try this. No excuses about pretending to be stuck.”

“I–what? Peter, are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. You’re already hard, aren’t you?”

He sees the shadow of Beck move underneath the stall, followed shortly by the reappearance of Beck’s cock in the hole. Peter wraps his hand around it without hesitation and squeezes, just a little bit harder than any normal person should be able to, giving Beck that tightness he’d claimed to have sought initially. 

Beck hisses again, and Peter glances up to see that he’s curled his fingers over the top of the stall.

He gives Beck a careful, experimental stroke. It feels kind of like a success, holding Beck’s cock fully hard in his hand. Not like a reward for tonight, not like a level-up in a video game, but like he’s finally gaining ground. He likes Beck, sure. It just hadn’t crossed his mind that there was more to like than his personality.

“Were you thinking about me the whole time?” Peter asks quietly, running his thumb along the curved edge of the head. “Was this your plan all along, taking me here? Or did you just think of it when I told you about the hole?”

“The whole time,” Beck whispers without hesitation. “I thought about you, your bravery out there against the elemental… I knew I wasn’t going to be able to tell you, I thought if you... knew I was interested you’d… turn me down…”

Peter squeezes a drop of precome from Beck’s slit. It’s starting to amaze him, the things he can get out of someone with his hand on their dick, and he wishes he could see what Beck looks like, whether his eyes are closed or looking down at the spot where he knows Peter should be, whether he looks embarrassed or just… turned on by all of it.

“Why here? Why now?”

“I love working with you, Peter,” Beck whispers. “I want to keep working with you. EDITH or no EDITH, Avengers or not. We’re a great team. A great partnership.”

At last, a little bit of honesty. 

Ignoring the unusual increase in his heart rate, Peter leans in and closes his lips over the head of Beck’s cock. Beck groans immediately, the loudest and most obvious indication so far that he’s genuinely enjoying what Peter’s doing, and for a moment Peter simply lets Beck’s cock rest on his tongue and tries to wrap his head around the fact that he’s now giving a blowjob at what’s probably the smallest glory hole in all of Prague.

The thing is, he’s a regular guy with superpowers. It’s easy enough to accept that he can suck a dick like one.

He takes his time suckling at the head and does his best to ignore the way Beck swears and rocks his hips forward, but he seems to have found a hot spot and he plans to exploit it; he’s unable to keep himself from smiling at the thought as he grips Beck’s cock and holds it in place so that he can explore the slit with his tongue. It’s not particularly bad-tasting, not after the stuff Beck had let him try a mouthful of out in the bar, but he takes a moment to reflect on his newfound understanding of the classic post-blowjob decision before he realizes that Beck is white-knuckling the top edge of the stall.

“Peter, oh my g–fuck. Shit,” Beck half-whispers. Something that sounds vaguely head-sized thunks against the wood somewhere a few feet above Peter’s shoulders and he realizes that not only can he feel Beck’s cock twitching on his tongue, but he can feel something in the air that almost seems to vibrate around them, like the way the sky trembles in a thunderstorm but… not, and Peter wonders (as much as he can while he’s still trying to figure out how much cock in his mouth is a comfortable amount) whether his special senses might lend something unusual and extraordinary to his sexual encounters, too.

After a moment Peter pulls his mouth away and keeps using his hand, spreading as much spit over Beck’s cock as he can get to ease the friction. He’s better at doing it like this, he knows, and it doesn’t seem like Beck minds the switch; he’s hardly saying anything coherent now, which Peter has assumed so far to mean that he’s doing a great job.

“You’re close, aren’t you?” he asks softly, and is answered with a long, low groan.

“Yeah.” Beck responds a little too quickly. He sounds strained. “Yeah, I’m just about…”

“Good,” Peter says. He leans in and licks at Beck again, and one of Beck’s boots scuffs against the floor. “Is it okay if I don’t–uh, if you just finish on my suit instead?”

Beck’s laugh is breathy, almost hysterical. “Yes, Peter, I’m gonna come on your fucking suit, okay?”

“Okay,” Peter says, feeling a shiver make its way along his spine. He moves his hand faster, straightening himself up in front of the glory hole in what he assumes to be a good position for… aiming? “Just tell me when you…”

He trails off because Beck is already coming, cock jerking in Peter’s hand and covering his fingers and then his chest in sticky white threads.

(If he didn’t look twice, he’d probably just assume it was excess web.)

He drops his hand after things start to slow and listens to the sound of Beck panting on the other side of the wall, and only then discovers that he’s breathing just as hard. The inside of his suit feels too warm all of a sudden, but he elects to ignore it and together they catch their breath in silence, until at last Peter watches Beck withdraw himself from the hole. The stall rattles unexpectedly, shaking another tiny flake of paint to the ground, and he guesses from the new orientation of Beck’s boots that he’s just slumped against the wall. Fabric rustles. Metal clinks.

Peter wipes his mouth off and grins a little. “See?”

“See what?”

“What happens when you ask instead of trying to trick people.”

Beck laughs, but it’s closer to a sound of exhaustion, the tired laugh of someone who has little left to give. The door to Beck’s stall swings open and then the door to Peter’s does, and Peter glances up from his position on the ground and grins sheepishly at Beck, whose usually-perfect hair looks like it’s just been personally styled by a hurricane; Beck holds out a hand and pulls Peter to his feet, and in a completely unexpected move he curls his arm around Peter’s shoulders and presses a long kiss against the side of his head.

His weight feels like it should be sinking Peter’s feet into the ground, but he braces himself and holds Beck upright as Beck whispers into his hair. “I’ll remember that.”

Peter awkwardly rests an arm on Beck’s waist. Then his back. It’s kind of like a hug, but he thinks he might be thirty seconds away from soiling the inside of his stealth suit. He probably won’t be able to survive full-body contact for at least another minute or two, but he doesn’t mind this. Whatever it is, a tender embrace or a thank-you hug or just a confirmation that Peter has not fled the scene in a panic, it feels kind of nice.

When Beck finally straightens up, he pats Peter on the shoulder and looks him up and down with a small, warm smile. “You look like you’re in a pretty rough place. What would you say to a little reciprocation?”

Peter wets his lips and furrows his brow in thought. It would be a terrible idea to skip out on the hotel and his friends, and he’ll need a gargantuan excuse to explain his unexplained absence… but he’s on vacation right now, and it seems like heroes don’t get very many of those in their careers. Besides, he’s not stumbling home drunk, or passing out in a cab or a stairwell or a dance floor. All that’s left is to take someone home for the night.

“No offence, but I’m not gonna put anything of mine in that hole,” Peter says. He runs his tongue over his lips and, with no small amount of satisfaction, watches Beck’s eyes follow the motion. “_But…_”

Beck’s smile widens. “Somewhere more private? I can probably get us a place. You’re cute, but if you walk into a hostel or a B&B looking like that, I can’t make any excuses for you.”

Peter looks down at his suit. Some of the not-web seems to have found its way onto the front of Beck’s elegant breastplate, an unfortunate result of their embrace, but he can’t tell if Beck has noticed or not. Pre-glory hole Peter would probably have said something about it, but post-glory hole Peter is feeling a little bit vindictive and a little over-confident. He’ll show Beck up for tonight. Better than that, he might even be able to show _off_.

“You know what? This place is kind of a dump,” Peter says. He tilts his chin and squares his shoulders and gives Beck a wink, then pats him on the shoulder and tries to ignore the full-body ache that Beck’s slow, mischievous grin ignites. “Let’s get out of here, Mr. Beck. We have a lot to celebrate.”


End file.
